IN just over a year, United States President Donald Trump, who ran for reelection as a “peace president,” has ordered the dropping of American bombs on seven countries, with Iran as the latest target. His tariff impositions, most of which had been declared illegal by the US Supreme Court, have largely shattered the 90-year-old global trading arrangement on fair rules and reciprocity. The oldest democracy in the world is forcing its major trading partners and close allies to form new trading blocs and military alliances outside of the US.
Institutions such as the United States Agency for International Development, which had been the source of the country’s soft power and influence, had been dismantled, along with the cuts in funding for scientific research and for the universities that have been the incubators of America’s scientific and technological superiority. “I love the uneducated,” Trump once said to express disdain for the educational institutions that have been turning out both the ideas and material goods that made the US an economic and military colossus.
But then, who cares about tariffs, bombs, and Trump’s whimsical and reckless governance in a nation where many of its 116 million people are functionally illiterate and largely scraping by economically? Who cares about decisions made by a foreign government? Not many — until the bombs raining out of reckless decisions are killing Filipinos and creating mayhem in the Middle East, where more than 2.4 million of our countrymen work and whose remittances have been a lifeline for their families back home.
Not many, until the recklessness of Trump’s decision-making hits us remittance-dependent Filipinos in the gut and where it hurts the most. Not many, until the report of our first casualty, a caregiver in Israel who unfortunately strayed out of her bomb shelter while Iran was retaliating. The next Filipino casualty was a merchant marine officer in an oil tanker on the Persian seas.
Not many, until the relatively stable oil prices, unmoved at $60 per barrel for so long, suddenly rose by $15/barrel just a few days after the first bombs fell on Iran. And foreign oil-dependent Philippines is forced to recalculate all its economic assumptions due to surging oil prices and the inevitability of inflation. The Strait of Hormuz, that narrow passageway used by one-fifth of all oil and gas tankers moving into foreign markets, including the Philippines, has been described as in a state of “de facto closure.” Right now, our dependency on foreign oil and surging domestic fuel prices have vaulted to the top of the most critical issues discussed by Malacañang.
Overseas Filipino worker (OFW) deaths, surging oil prices, and vanishing remittances are not things we can wish away, and right now we are stuck — as the world at large is stuck — with the decision-making of a president who governs with recklessness and whimsy several thousand miles away.
At this point, polity has yet to seriously discuss the possibility of a full-blown escalation of the Middle East conflict and the need to forcibly repatriate hundreds of thousands of OFWs in the extreme danger zones. More than 300 have been repatriated as of Friday morning. The combined assets of married contractors Curlee and Sarah Discaya and the Cos — former Ako Bicol party-list representative Zaldy and his contractor-relatives — may have to be seized to help fund the mass evacuation of our OFWs in the Middle East.
There is one thing, though, that we can discuss right now: the 2028 elections that will allow us again to choose our next president. We should need to discuss what mistakes and pitfalls to avoid to prevent the election of a Trump-like figure, which, in essence, is just like discussing what pitfalls and mistakes to avoid to prevent the emergence of another Rodrigo Duterte. Governance-wise, Trump and Duterte are one and the same: whimsical, reckless, directionless. Two presidents who wreck everything they touch, specifically the critical institutions of democracy and nation-building. Trump is like Duterte, but with the nuclear codes — and a giant megaphone and stage.
Indeed, as Vladimir Lenin once asked, what is to be done? How do we get to that critical point of reaching a consensus that we need to vote for moderation, not recklessness and hubris. The need to vote for a leader deeply consumed by serious and deliberate policymaking, not the know-nothingness magnified by Trump and Duterte? That leadership requires commitment to the ethos that “who should be first should be last,” not a leader who is the perpetual center of everybody’s attention.
At the very least, the chaos in the Middle East, tragic as it is, must lead many Filipinos to realize that our next leader should have a deep understanding on how the world works. The next leader should be equipped with the necessary skills to steer the ship of state through economic dislocations caused by senseless wars started elsewhere. We never expected the addition of foreign affairs into the coursework and workload of the president that Filipinos will elect in 2028. But stuff happens, and the twin scourges of wars and tariffs — plus the upended global order — will require an intellectual upgrade from the new president.
This upgrade may disqualify those running on the insular platforms. Presidential candidates who can’t write a two-page summation on the upended global order. The good news is that it’s easy to identify the dumbos.